


Guiding Light

by Fairleigh



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Getting Together, M/M, Merpeople, Mild Sexual Content, No Dialogue, Worldbuilding, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-11-26 02:51:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20922968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairleigh/pseuds/Fairleigh
Summary: He’d never seen a worca up close and personal before, though like every Kankouan child he’d been raised with fanciful stories about them. The one Elias remembered most vividly from his boyhood said that the worca were immortal beings charged by the Old Gods with guarding the secret, underwater portals between the worlds of the living and the dead. When someone died, a worca would chaperone the deceased person’s soul to the afterlife.





	Guiding Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).

The eastern tip of Deau Bay at the mouth of the River Nara was shaped like a barbed fishhook and designed expressly, it seemed, by the Old Gods to catch and scuttle unwary merchant ships hugging the coastline as they made their way south towards the Kankou port capital.

Most of the length of this “hook” consisted of an impassable rocky shoal which was only exposed during low tide. The “barb” was the only portion of the shoal which remained stubbornly above water no matter how high the King Tides did rise, and so it was upon this bleak, wave-battered, windswept spit of rock that the Deau Bay Lighthouse was constructed. Its light had been shining without fail for six generations.

Many had been stationed there over the years, but they rarely lasted long in the position. The job was lonely and unrelenting, and given the logistical difficulties of visiting the mainland regularly as well as the lack of any safe mooring anywhere nearby, guests were vanishingly rare. The most successful Lighthousekeepers historically brought their families to keep them company and relieve the solitude.

Elias, therefore, was a rarity; he had been Lighthousekeeper for nearly ten years, and he lived alone, and he’d _never_ received any visitors. If asked, he would’ve said that he _preferred _his own society to that of his fellow men, but that would have been a lie. It was just that being alone was _easier_. It meant that he didn’t have to explain himself … or any of what the Kankou mainlanders would have termed his “unnatural” proclivities.

~*~*~

The unconscious worca male who washed in on a King Tide was Elias’ very first visitor.

He’d never seen a worca up close and personal before, though like every Kankouan child he’d been raised with fanciful stories about them. The one Elias remembered most vividly from his boyhood said that the worca were immortal beings charged by the Old Gods with guarding the secret, underwater portals between the worlds of the living and the dead. When someone died, a worca would chaperone the deceased person’s soul to the afterlife.

But Elias wasn’t a boy anymore, of course, and he didn’t believe in immortal worca who swam between worlds with the souls of the dead. Instead, he was more inclined to believe the Scholars, who said that the worca were just people who lived unremarkable lives beneath the sea, much the same as humans lived above the land. Their countershading, night dark above and bluish pale below, was what gave them their liminal reputation. But this adaptation was by no means supernatural and was to be found amongst many of nature’s creatures both great and small.

Certainly the worca’s injuries were nothing that would imply anything mysterious or strange. His tailbone had been badly dislocated, and he wouldn’t be able to swim properly until it had been set and healed. Although Elias and the worca had no tongue in common, he seemed to understand that Elias wished to help him, for he did not struggle when Elias carried him gently into the lighthouse, laid him down atop Elias’ own bed, and began to minister to his injury.

Elias wondered what happened to worca who couldn’t swim or rise to the surface to breathe. Did their pods help them, or was this sort of injury a virtual death sentence? It didn’t bear dwelling upon.

~*~*~

The healing process took weeks, and for that period, the worca was helpless, completely at Elias’ mercy. Fortunately, Elias was merciful at heart.

Elias was responsible for keeping the lighthouse light burning at all times, even during the most fiercely inclement weather, and he was also responsible for the upkeep of the lighthouse and its grounds. Otherwise, though, he was free to do as he pleased, and soon enough he was spending all of his free waking hours with the worca. (He also spent all of his sleeping hours with the worca as well, since he only had the one bed to share, but that was a different matter.)

He brought the worca food when it was hungry; and he brought the worca the chamber pot and gave him privacy when he needed to relieve himself. He bathed the worca, too, rubbing down the worca’s rubbery, hairless flesh with seed oil to help keep it supple. Every few days, he checked the worca’s injuries and refreshed the bandages.

And, he listened to the worca sing. He didn’t understand the words — if there were even words — but he thought he’d never heard a more beautiful sound. He thought the music made the worca seem beautiful to him as well. No, the worca didn’t just _seem_ beautiful; he _was_ beautiful …

Sometimes Elias woke in the night to feel the worca’s arms wrapped around him, bodies nestled together, the steady inhalations and exhalations of the worca’s warm breath tickling the base of his throat. They were always separated again by morning.

~*~*~

The worca returned to the ocean. Elias watched him flick his muscular tail high in the air as he dove beneath an incoming wave and out of sight. He felt a twinge of sadness.

Three more years passed. The King Tides were increasing in frequency and duration, and during especially bad storms the water line came nearly to the very walls of the lighthouse. In grimmer moments when he was erecting makeshift barricades of sandbags while being pelted by frigid, driving rain and deafened by crashes of thunder, Elias wondered if perhaps he was on borrowed time, if this was not just another natural fluctuation in the rhythms of the world, or if perhaps Kankou was being punished for its sins and hubris.

The worca came to visit on occasion, at least once per season. He seemed hale and healthy, not to mention endlessly grateful to Elias, and he cared nothing for the cruel prohibitions of man. When, on impulse, Elias leaned forward to kiss him, he reciprocated the kiss, pushing his flat chest and muscular hips into Elias, urging Elias down flat on his back, and when his vent gaped open and the long, fleshy organ within pushed free, he continued right on pushing it _into_ Elias like it had always belonged there. Elias wept with joy.

In the fourth year after Elias had showed compassion to a worca, a terrible storm hit Deau Bay right at the peak of yet another King Tide. It demolished the fishhook and swallowed the lighthouse so completely it was as if it’d never existed in the first place. The body of Elias the Lighthousekeeper was never found. He was officially declared dead but little mourned.

The lighthouse was not rebuilt. It wasn’t needed in that location anymore.

But shortly after that, there was a new fanciful story about the worca being told to Kankouan children. It said that, in the morning before that terrible storm, a worca bathed in light took the Lighthousekeeper into his arms, fitted their mouths together, and carried him beneath the waves. Neither were ever seen again, and where they might have gone or now reside, no one knew. One thing, however, was always certain in the story: The man and his worca lover were together forever.


End file.
